In today's business environment, the telephone is used for many purposes: placing catalogue orders; checking airline schedules; querying prices; reviewing account balances; notifying customers of price or schedule changes; and recording and retrieving messages. Often, each telephone call involves a service representative talking to a caller, asking questions, entering responses into a computer, and reading information to the caller from a terminal screen. This process can be automated by substituting an interactive voice response system using recorded or synthesised voice for asking questions and reading information, and speech recognition for listening to the callers requests and replies.
An IVR may have more than one speech recognition engine so that for a particular interaction the best engine may be selected and used. Patent publication WO 98/10413 discloses a speech processing system and a method concerning a speech processing system which comprises a number of speech recognition modules and speech output modules which are each provided for a given type of speech recognition. Depending on the function required, the modules, are selected, activated and parameterized by a module selection-device.
However, focusing on the function of the particular interaction ignores that certain speech recognition engines are better than others for certain languages. Each module in the prior art is configured for a specific application. Most recognition engines have different lexicons for the range of functions but it is the full lexicon which can determine an engines suitability for a language. For instance, one type of speech recognition engine may be preferred for certain languages whereas IBM ViaVoice is a good general all rounder. Choosing one speech recognition module according to application alone is not entirely satisfactory when the application may be multilingual and there is a need for improvement.